Fort Pierce Wastewater Plant Relocation

The Fort Pierce Utilities Authority is moving its wastewater treatment plant off Hutchinson Island to the mainland to take sewage treatment away from the Indian River Lagoon, at the request of the City of Fort Pierce.

In a November 6, 2023 letter to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, the City of Fort Pierce called the project a critically important community effort that will relocate an aging wastewater treatment plant off South Hutchinson Island to the mainland and serve to protect the Indian River Lagoon (City of Fort Pierce request to assign grant 23FRP12). FPUA's own budget ties the cost to that request: government and regulatory projects take 52% of the FY 2026 to FY 2030 capital plan, primarily driven by the City of Fort Pierce's request to relocate the wastewater plant and redirect the wastewater conveyance system (FPUA FY 2026 Annual Budget).

The water reclamation section of the same budget calls relocating the island plant a critical project for the growth of FPUA, and says the new mainland plant and the associated conveyance reversal projects will bring state-of-the-art treatment and effluent disposal, a higher quality effluent and beneficial reuse water. The FY 2024 report on FPUA finances adds that the move will shift wastewater processing off of the Indian River Lagoon (FPUA FY 2024 ACFR).

FPUA's island sewer plant, the Island Water Reclamation Facility, is permitted for 10 million gallons a day, took its current form in 1986, and sends treated effluent down a deep injection well.

FPUA's history page says the current configuration of the Island Water Reclamation Facility (IWRF) was completed in 1986, upgraded with a deep injection well system in 1993, and given a 2000 kW generator in 2019 to keep treatment and pumping running in storm-related power outages (FPUA history page). The same page says the plant treats an average 4.5 million gallons a day and that Lift Station A, built in 1995, can move 8,000 gallons of wastewater a minute from the mainland across to the island plant.

The FY 2024 ACFR gives the IWRF a permitted capacity of 10 MGD for Annual Average Daily Flow and 11.5 MGD for 3-Month Annual Average Daily Flow, and a collection system of 126 major lift stations, 183 miles of gravity sewer lines and about 112 miles of force mains feeding it. FPUA documents give two depths for the island's disposal well: the history page and the ACFR say 3,300 feet, while the water reclamation description in the FY 2026 budget says a 3,000 feet deep injection disposal well. Both figures are shown as each Fort Pierce document prints them.

The new Mainland Water Reclamation Facility sits in the southwest corner of the FPUA service area, which the city describes as 5 miles west, off the lagoon, in an industrial area far from neighborhoods.

The city's January 2024 resiliency briefing to the City Commission says the new facility will provide reuse water to cooling towers, eliminating an average of 2 MGD withdrawn from the Floridan aquifer, and that the project includes restoring 2.23 acres of seagrass, with potential for another 2.47 acres if more grant money is awarded. The FY 2024 ACFR names the destination of that reuse water, the Florida Municipal Power Agency's Treasure Coast Energy Center, and says the new plant will conserve two million gallons per day from Florida's aquifers.

According to the FY 2026 Annual Budget, two deep injection wells sit on the site of the future Mainland Water Reclamation Facility: IW-1, an 18-inch industrial well that already takes the Treasure Coast Energy Center's industrial wastewater and St. Lucie County landfill leachate, and IW-2, a 24-inch domestic well that the budget says is currently not in operation. FPUA's April 2023 bill insert told customers the new plant was being built next to the Treasure Coast Energy Center natural gas power plant, and listed four acres of seagrass restoration in the Indian River Lagoon among FPUA investments, a different acreage from the city briefing; both are given as printed. The budget's status report as of July 2025 records that all basins at the Fort Pierce plant had been hydrostatically tested, that the headworks to AquaNereda basin 42-inch pipe connections were complete, and that masonry walls of the main and secondary electrical buildings were complete.

The new Fort Pierce plant carries a $140 million Guaranteed Maximum Price funded by Series 2022A bonds, grants and bond interest, while grants and new debt fund the pipes that redirect flow.

Each figure appears in the document named beside it: the city's resiliency briefing, the city's grant assignment letter, the FPUA FY 2024 ACFR and the FPUA FY 2026 Annual Budget. The two FPUA reports print the Phase 2 Resilient Florida award one dollar apart, $28,061,358 in the ACFR and $28,061,359 in the budget, and both values are shown. The ACFR also reports an additional $37 million in grant funds raised to re-route wastewater flow toward the new plant, and its schedule of awards lists $25,030,275 spent in FY 2024 under DEP grant 23FRP12.

Customers have paid a share through rates. The ten-year rate change table in the FPUA FY 2026 budget lists WW Plant Relocation as the reason for two 5.00% increases in water rates and two 5.00% increases in wastewater rates, alongside the FPSC price index and rate sufficiency adjustments. The Fort Pierce water and wastewater rates guide covers the current FPUA rate schedule.

Moving the plant also means reversing the Fort Pierce sewer network so that wastewater flows west to the mainland plant instead of east to Hutchinson Island, work FPUA calls the Systematic Wastewater Conveyance System Redirection.

The FY 2026 Annual Budget calls the conveyance redirection equally important to the relocation and says it is built as multiple smaller projects in phases. Phase 1A has four capital projects that, once complete, will redirect 5.75 million gallons per day (MGD) of flow to the new plant: the Jenkins Road Force Main Extension from Okeechobee Road to Edwards Road, the Lift Station A/AE Backus Force Main Extension, the Moore's Creek Booster Station, and the Jenkins Road/NSLRWCD Force Main from Edwards Road to the MWRF. Phase 1A is budgeted at $34 million and Phase 1B at $33 million, and the budget says grant funding has been awarded for 58% of these projects.

In the five-year capital plan, the WW Conveyance System to MWRF line carries $31,561,359 in grant funding and $45,000,000 in anticipated debt, and the MWRF Relocation line carries $35,381,561 in grant funding in FY 2026 (FY 2026 capital improvement plan summary). The budget also warns that some Fort Pierce projects will raise expenses because two wastewater plants must operate at the same time while flow is redirected. The FY 2024 ACFR says construction work in progress doubled from FY 2023, mostly from relocating the plant and rerouting the conveyance system from Hutchinson Island to the mainland (FPUA FY 2024 ACFR, capital assets note).

FPUA owns, runs and pays for the relocation, after the City of Fort Pierce asked the state in 2023 to assign the Resilient Florida grant for the project directly to the utility.

The city's November 6, 2023 letter asked the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, Office of Resilience and Coastal Protection, to assign Grant 23FRP12 to FPUA so the utility could assume full responsibility for the whole grant project. It says the city and FPUA first expected to hand the work over through a memorandum of understanding, until FDEP found FPUA eligible for the Resilient Florida Program in its own right. The letter states that the treatment plant is fully owned and operated by FPUA, that its relocation will be fully managed and funded by FPUA, and that FPUA is a separate unit of the city government created by City Charter in 1972, with a five-member board of four members appointed by the City Commission plus the Mayor of Fort Pierce.

The relocation also shows up in FPUA's plans. Its FY 2026 strategic plan lists Strategy 2.2, Complete the Wastewater Treatment Plant relocation, and the budget names a weekly Wastewater Wednesdays blog with photos as the place FPUA shares the project publicly (FPUA FY 2026 Annual Budget). The Fort Pierce Utilities Authority guide covers the utility's other systems.

Dated FPUA and city documents record the Mainland Water Reclamation Facility from a 2023 grant request through construction work reported as of July 2025, and each statement below is tied to its document date.

The rows come from the FPUA April 2023 bill insert, the city letter and resiliency briefing, the FY 2024 ACFR and the FY 2026 Annual Budget.